


The prince that got away

by myrish_lace



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Jon and Sansa Are Not Related, Letters, Mutual Pining, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 11:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrish_lace/pseuds/myrish_lace
Summary: Jon and Sansa exchange letters while Jon's at boarding school. Jon takes Sansa to a Halloween dance after she breaks up with Joffrey. Sansa's able to wear her handmade Cinderella dress, Jon's dressed up as Prince Charming, and they have a surprisingly lovely time. But Jon runs off at the end of the evening, and Sansa's crushed. He drops a glove at the bottom of the stairs, and Sansa keeps it, unsure of what to do, until Jon's next letter arrives.





	The prince that got away

**Author's Note:**

> Note to my regular readers: You will have already seen this in my drabbles collection. I had some requests to break it out as a separate story, so I've done that here Don't mean to spam you, I swear!.  
> ***  
> This is a Halloween reverse ugly duckling / Cinderella headcanon that, um, got away from me. The fluffiest of fluff, and my first happy jonsa fic post-writer's block (getting back into the swing!) I hope you enjoy it!

Sansa always dresses up as Cinderella on Halloween. She knows how to sew and she’s been making her own gown since she was ten. She’s seventeen now and it’s a marvel, sewn-on crystals, silver mesh overlay, tulle underskirts, A teen fashion magazine even asked her to do a shoot until Ned put his foot down. 

Joffrey was going to be Sansa’s Halloween dance date but they’ve broken up, and Sansa’s relieved. She’s also heartbroken, though she only lets a few close people know it. Margaery, Arya, and, oddly enough Robb’s best friend Jon, who’s been away at boarding school the past two years. 

Jon was hard to talk to when they were younger but he’s easy to write to. They started exchanging letters after Sansa clipped out an article about fencing from the newspaper, feeling like her bloody mom the whole time. She includes a note about how she hopes he’s found a fencing team. 

Jon surprised her by writing back, and now she hurries to the mailbox each day, because even though she’s pretty sure Margaery and Arya know about her pen-pal, she’d like to keep it her own secret for a little while. 

She writes him a wild, sad letter after the Joffrey breakup, almost like a diary entry, and before she can stop herself she mails it. She has a pit in her stomach the entire week, because if anything scares a guy off (and apparently Jon’s a guy she doesn’t want to scare off, but she’s not looking at that emotion too closely) it’s exclamation marks and crossed-out words and sort of general sobbing onto a page.

Jon’s letter back is the thickest one yet. He tells her that Joffrey sounds like an asshole, and he assumes Robb’s pummeled the prick, but if not Jon will happily sneak out and come home and do the job, and she almost believes him, he sounds so fierce.

But then he tells her funny stories about his boarding school mates, and she’s laughing for the first time in days reading about Pyp and Grenn and Sam and the Cafeteria Caper, he capitalizes it and everything, and it should be corny but it isn’t.

He ends by saying he hopes she doesn’t let Joffrey take Halloween away from her, and that she can still enjoy the magic of it like she did when they were kids. He says he’ll be there to cheer her on for the dance, he has an October break and he’ll be home Halloween weekend. 

She writes him back, her fingers shaking, and asks if he would think about being her date? She’d buy him the Prince Charming costume so he wouldn’t have to worry and she knows he doesn’t have long in town so she totally understands if he can’t do it and she’s babbling, in a  _letter_ , how she managed that she’s not sure. But she is nervous, when she slips the letter in the mailbox. She tells herself it probably won’t even get there in time. It’ll be good to see him next weekend either way. 

Margaery taps on her door Halloween afternoon and tells her to don that ethereal, gorgeous confection of a gown, because she’s got a surprise for her, and she  _is_ going to that dance. Sansa grumbles that she’s not in the mood for surprises, she’d rather have a good sulk, but Margaery tells her not to dawdle. Margaery won’t give her any details, just smiles that enigmatic smile when Sansa asks her what’s going on. 

Soon she’s being practically shoved outside. The Stark house is a mansion, really, set back from the street, with a long, winding staircase and a wrought iron railing. Spotlights show off her mother’s garden, and Sansa squints and sees….a man who must be Jon at the bottom of the steps. This Jon is dark, and filled out, and breathtakingly handsome, so different from the scrawny teen Sansa remembers that’s she’s thrown off guard for a minute. 

They go to the dance and he’s still Jon, awkward and shy, but she coaxes him out of it and thanks him for writing to her. They manage to start talking after that, and even though she’d expected Jon to step on her toes he doesn’t, not once. He confides that Pyp taught him to dance, a little, and she shoes away the silly thought that Jon might have practiced for her. 

It gets close to midnight and she leans in and murmurs she has to get back, or she’ll turn into a pumpkin. Jon says isn’t that the coach? 

She teases him, because he used to call Disney movies a tool of the patriarchy. Jon smiles at that, says she isn’t wrong. But maybe he watched one or two, because how could he form an opinion otherwise? 

They drive back to the Stark house and Jon gets out of the car to see her off. Sansa wonders playfully if she should leave her shoe on the stairs? Jon rubs the back of his head and says she can, but he knows her, he wouldn’t have to look for her, though he would if she wanted. His gaze is soft and serious, and suddenly Sansa isn’t so sure if they’re joking anymore. 

Sansa’s flustered, and can’t figure out how to say goodnight. In the end she hugs him, because they’re friends, almost family, and she should not feel the way she does about his dark eyes. 

He hugs her back for a beat too long and Sansa rests her head on his shoulder. Jon mumbles a question about whether he can still write to her and without thinking Sansa says she runs to the mailbox to check for his letters.

She pulls away from him mortified, stammering, until he confesses he does the same thing. His mates kid him about it, but what would his life be like if he didn’t know who won the next round of Dancing with the Stars? 

Sansa realizes he’s easing her fears, trying to reassure her. She takes his hand and squeezes it, leans in to kiss him on the cheek. He goes very still when she brushes her lips over his hint of a beard, and Sansa’s stomach drops, because she thinks she’s misjudged. He’s flushed and quiet and pulls his hand away without a word, hard enough that his glove falls onto the pavement. He almost runs to his car. 

Sansa’s shocked, sad, but resigned. She trudges up the stairs. What did she expect? She’s the kid sister of his best friend, he was doing her a favor, did she have to reach for more and try to kiss him?

She stops writing to Jon. She won’t even check the mail, because it’d hurt too much not to see his handwriting peeking out from between the adverts. 

Two weeks later Arya yells something in the hallway and an envelope shoots under her door like a hockey puck. Sansa’s heart pounds when she sees her name in Jon’s familiar scrawl.

Jon doesn’t tell her any stories, just starts out with a two-page long apology about how he’s sorry for bolting and she looked beautiful in her dress and he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable because they’re family and that’s more important than anything and Sansa starts to smile, because  _Jon’s_  babbling in a letter, and it’s adorable, especially when he tells her at the end that if she’d give him another chance he would have kissed her back and he totally gets why that might be weird and she can absolutely burn this letter and he’ll act like nothing happened and he really cares about her, no matter what. 

She takes a deep breath and writes back, short but sweet, telling him she found a glove on the stairs, it belongs to a wonderful man who danced with her and made her feel special and ran away too soon and could he help her find him? 

Arya and Margaery go with Sansa to greet Jon when he pulls into the driveway for Thanksgiving dinner. Sansa hisses at them that she’d like a minute alone with Jon but Margaery just smirks and Arya crosses her arms and grins. Sansa sighs. She knows when she’s been beaten.

She considers it a small victory when they agree to stay on the landing. Sansa manages to give Jon the glove discreetly when he steps out of the car. He starts to try it on, bless him, but Sansa gently takes his wrist and says he doesn’t have to, she knows him after all, and that makes him smile. 

Jon cups the back of her head and pulls her closer. She can barely hear the hoots and hollers from the top of the stairs because Jon’s lips are soft and his hand’s pressed to the small of her back. He’s gentle, careful, chivalrous, like a prince,  _her_ prince, and she doesn’t plan on letting him get away this time. 


End file.
